n giography [1], and has been studied further since the as well as its impact on mortality has differed vastly be- CARDIOVASCULAR

Full list of author information is available at the end of the articleintroduction of echocardiography in intensive care clinical practice. Numerous studies have described diastolic as well as systolic dysfunction, or a combination of the two, in septic shock, using a variety of different echocardio-graphic parameters [2-6]. Furthermore, echocardiography tween studies [2,3,5]. Differences in study size, inclusion criteria and in the prevalence of pre-existing heart-disease may have contributed to the varying results. In cardiology settings, a substantial interobserver variability in echocar-diographic assessment has been described, especially in stress echocardiography [8-10]. In intensive care, echocar-diographic assessment is often complicated by tachycar- * Correspondence: lina.de.geer@regionostergotland.se1Department of Intensive Care and Department of Medical and Healthtic shock. It was first described using radionuclide cinean-Background: Echocardiography is increasingly used for haemodynamic evaluation and titration of therapy in intensive care, warranting reliable and reproducible measurements. The aim of this study was to evaluate the observer dependence of echocardiographic findings of left ventricular (LV) diastolic and systolic dysfunction in patients with septic shock